As expected Congress moved with great haste to shuffle around sequestration effects to some other part of the budget that does not invonvenience them personally. It is nice that the FAA has a little more discretion with its straitjacketed budget, but this does raise one smallish question. Which part of the FAA do we not need?
Hmm
by Tim F| 81 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
NotMax
The F.
Aviation Administration is sufficient.
Certified Mutant Enemy
I’m guessing safety inspectors.
PsiFighter37
I wonder why the inherent reaction is “Oh, let’s fix this part of sequestration RIGHT AWAY!” instead of Democrats pointing at Republicans and making them OWN these cuts.
This was a perfect time and place to do it. Sometimes, Democrats suck at the political part of politics.
NonyNony
I’m assuming that they will just shut down as many rural airports as they need to in order to keep the budget money for the big airports in place. Where else would the FAA get money from if they’re not getting more from Congress?
LittlePig
The whole concept of ‘paying for government services received’, aka taxes, just completely escapes these folks. Spoiled brats who want their cake and eat it, too.
Tom, the part “we don’t need” is the amount the poor bastards left over have to make up. 12 hour shifts instead of 8, I expect.
OT, George Jones passed away. Folks of my age and region have heard a whole passel of George Jones songs.
LittlePig
@NonyNony: I’m assuming that they will just shut down as many rural airports
This too. Gotta keep our elites happy, and keep the march to feudalism apace.
Villago Delenda Est
@LittlePig:
They need to be sent to bed without their supper.
FOREVER.
patrick II
@PsiFighter37:
Which is the basic problem with sequestration. Congress will fix the parts that incovenience rich or military but leave the poor “sequestered”, i.e. screwed.
Violet
@PsiFighter37: Sometimes? Seems like most times.
? Martin
The salary over minimum wage and have benefits.
The GOP is all in favor of the FAA, so long as employees are treated like Bangladesh textile workers.
SatanicPanic
@NonyNony: You think so? I’d bet a lot of these dipshit congresspeople are flying home to who-knows-where and they’re not going to skimp on those airports either.
PeakVT
Which part of the FAA do we not need?
They’ll probably slow down upgrade projects that have been dragging on for years already.
I recommend buying stock in vacuum tube manufacturers.
scav
Don’t know about the rural airports as there are lots in Red states. normally would have assumed the safty guy on the ground/plane end, but the 787 thing complicates that — well, maybe. There’s alway the stifles innovatin ‘n’ job creatin string to be tugged there.
jibeaux
C’mon, the “waste, fraud, and abuse” part, these are softballs, Tim.
Walker
It appears that they are taking some of the money out of federal subsidies for airlines in rural areas. If that is the case, ticket prices and airport fees going to go way up at rural airports. So some pain will still be felt, but only by the people that cannot afford it.
Higgs Boson's Mate
There’s no way that our high-minded Congress would ever in any way be at pains to remove itself from the effects of measures that it passed.
You’ll have to excuse me now; I just cranked the top of off a fresh quart of toluene and I’m about to resume huffing.
amk
@PsiFighter37:
FFFF.
ericblair
They’re supposed to cut the 60% of every agency budget that pays for Obamaphones and Cadillacs for blah people.
Any fraud, waste, and abuse that’s easy to find and easy to cut has pretty much been cut. Either the waste is diffuse, mandated by law, or hard to differentiate from non-waste, so it hasn’t been cut, or more likely it’s pretty obvious waste but protected by some 800 pound gorillas in Congress.
The Moar You Know
@Walker: A textbook definition of “the American Way”.
The Moar You Know
@jibeaux: The F-35 production lines are still roaring along.
Villago Delenda Est
@ericblair:
Much of the “waste, fraud, and abuse” can be traced back to Congresscritters lading bills with pork for selected friends, like Defense contractors, Halliburton in general, people in the “Awl Bidness”, etc.
It’s a feature, not a bug, for these bandits to make out like overfed rats in a grain silo.
As long as the poors suffer, it’s all good.
Mustang Bobby
So yeah, while Head Start teachers get laid off, senators can fly home without having to wait outside the Cinnabon at DFW for an extra hour.
Makes perfect sense.
Sloegin
There’s an inexhaustible supply of that waste and fraud stuff. Just like them oil wells. They never run out.
TAPX486
@PeakVT: That’s where they will make the cuts – maintenance and upgrades. And remember deferred maintenance worked so well for the railroads in the 1960’s and when you delay fixing that leaky roof!!!!
Frankensteinbeck
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
It looks like you picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue?
Hill Dweller
@PsiFighter37: While I agree with you, keep in mind the Beltway was dutifully blaming the delays on Obama playing politics with the cuts.
Now that congress has passed legislation giving the FAA flexibility in dealing with the mandated cuts, I’m sure we’ll see lots of retractions in the press…
Petorado
This wallpapers over the embarrassing hole in the wall, while letting the quiet suffering continue. That’s Republicans for ya –mind the visuals and ignore the substance.
Michele C
@Villago Delenda Est: I’ve just noticed (slow on the uptake again in believing that Congress really is greedy) that the attack on the NSF is actually about gaining control of the grants in order to steer them towards the people they want to steer money to. “Not trying to micromanage” but trying to replace the peer review system with Congresscritters get to decide science: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/04/nsf-peer-review-under-scrutiny-b.html Oh, and no funding for things they don’t like, like climate change research.
Comrade Dread
All of it, Silly.
Private contractors can do the same job on a state by state or county by county or city by city basis, so we can award contracts for air traffic control to private companies owned by our friends. Free Market, bitches.
The companies won’t want to lose their contracts or be sued, so surely, they won’t hire any but the best qualified and ensure that there are sufficient air traffic controllers to handle the amount of traffic in a given airport and that those controllers are always well-rested and not working 18 hour shifts.
Also, there’s little need of Federal oversight of planes and maintenance. The airlines and air manufacturers will surely recognize that spending money to maintain and build good aircraft will be in their best long term interest, so they won’t cut corners for fear of lawsuits from the crash victim’s next of kin.
I believe in you, John Galt! (Claps Louder)
NotMax
C’mon, Repubs, you’re not going full throttle. Where are the raft of bills to sell off the towers and privatize the FAA?
Zifnab
Why, the part I’m not using, of course. I live in Houston and I don’t do a lot of air travel to the western half of the country. So maybe cut back funds to LAX and assorted west-coast towers.
I mean, I’m not using them. So I assume the only folks flying on those lines are swarthy, urban youths and liberal tax-and-spend elitists. Real ‘Muricans only fly to Florida and Michigan.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Michele C:
I’m sure it make perfect sense to somebody to have a bunch of clowns who believe Adam and Eve road dinosaurs to church scrutinize NSF peer review…
catclub
@The Moar You Know: The subsidies to people who choose to live far from cities, but still demand (and get) cheaper airfares. That is a subsidy to ‘people who cannot afford it’?
Not to me. Those folks out in the country screech the loudest and are most effective at it. But 80% of the population lives in big cities
PsiFighter37
@Hill Dweller: I don’t remember the last time the press had any shame at all. They sucked back in the 90s when I was growing up, and they’ve only gotten worse. The fact that clowns like Mark Halperin who would be better-suited to writing for TMZ are taken as serious political journalists in this country is a good indication of how crappy the media in this country has become.
raven
I’m sure we all saw this 8 page NYT article today?
U.S. Opens Spigot After
blahFarmers Claim DiscriminationTAPX486
@Comrade Dread: The 787 Dreamliner its battery problem and the FAA rubber stamping it show that we really can trust the private sector to do the profitable thing.(sigh)
catclub
@Petorado: “That’s Republicans for ya ”
Nope, it is the entire senate. Unanimous consent.
Mr Stagger Lee
Meanwhile at a hearing for the solution to the problem of the Long Term Unemployed, only four senators bothered to show up. Che Guevara call on the white courtesy phone please! Herr Baader, Frau Meinhof please call your office!
some guy
Folding like a cheap suit: ladies and gentlemen, your Democratic Party.
Michele C
@Certified Mutant Enemy: Yep. This is the most depressed I’ve ever been about the state of politics in America.
RaflW
@PsiFighter37: Blame Amy Klobuchar (D – Jello salad). I do.
As a coauthor, she f*cking took a knife and sliced the best piece of leverage off the sequester.
“What poor people?” she could faintly be heard saying as she tra-la-la’d down the hall towards the awaiting press scrum.
I’m a M innesotan, I’m livid.
thalarctos
The Washington establishment clearly believes that pain is only for poor people. Gawd forbid that some tycoon’s Gulfstream should sit idling in the taxiway for a nanosecond more than is necessary, or that a lobbyist should be late for an audience with their
employeeCongresscritter.Congress, the antonym of progress.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Pierce has a long quote from a New Mexico paper complaining that park service cuts are just politics: “your tax dollars at work”, they sarcastically grouse, apparently genuinely oblivious to the fact that this is just the opposite, your tax dollars being withheld from doing the things you want the government to do. So we’re back to “Those clowns in Washington…” instead of a recognition that “spending” isn’t all wastefraudandabuse, but that’s so ingrained in the national psyche it’s like arguing about gravity. I can imagine a version of that op/ed in just about every paper in the country. Most Republicans, McConnell most notably, get that they can just throw a wrench in the machine and then say the machine doesn’t work. The press doesn’t.
Patrick
At least the House Dems are showing some backbone and are opposing the senate measure.
It beats me why the Senate Dems think that the FAA should get priority when cancer victims are not. It is sad to watch what’s going in DC.
NotMax
@Mr Stagger Lee
Those campaign fund
raisingbegging calls don’t make themselves.some guy
even TPM is laughing at the Democrats for their complete ineptitude, and that takes some doing.
Bokonon
@PsiFighter37:
As Beltway journalist hacks go, Fred Barnes is even worse – and unfortunately, I think ol’ Fred has served as a model for a whole generation of journalists – probably including Halperin.
I remember when Barnes came to my college to speak back in the 1980’s, and cheerfully told us college students that truth doesn’t really matter, that Washington is full of fun power games that journalists can play in (sometimes for great profit!), that everyone in journalism is a partisan and that’s OK. What’s the truth, anyway?
The cheerful cynicism and lack of principle seemed shocking at the time. Us students filed from the talk shaking our heads and exchanging glances. Holy hell!
What seemed shocking then is now the norm.
Hill Dweller
@Patrick: Have they actually voted in the House yet? If House Dems vote “no” in sufficient numbers, it would give Obama the opportunity to veto it.
That said, Republicans would accuse Obama of blocking a bi-partisan “fix” to flight delays.
Joel
Well, this is turning out to be a fine bowl of dicks.
Joel
FYWP
Yutsano
I knew this would happen. Fix the parts of the sequester that affect their donors and ignore or fuck the rest. Meanwhile the agency that could have avoided this whole damn thing because we bring in the money cuts $600 million. Fuck you Republicans.
Patrick
@Hill Dweller:
Not yet. Time will tell. Both Pelosi and Hoyer oppose it. And Pelosi is a good leader in that she usually gets most of her members to vote her way.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/top-house-democrat-opposes-bill-to-avert-faa
Yutsano
I knew this would happen. Fix the parts of the sequester that affect their donors and ignore or fuck the rest. Meanwhile the agency that could have avoided this whole damn thing because we bring in the money cuts $600 million. Fuck you Republicans.
Schlemizel
@RaflW:
Join the club. Wife & I busted our asses & emptied our wallets to get her elected the first time. She immediately fell in line with Boy Blunder!
I tried to cut her some slack because she was new & the first Dem Senator we had for a bit. But calling her office asking for explanations on votes got me lied to. When I complained to her in person she promised me a call & then just blew that off. She has turned into an empty suit of a Senator, more worried about her re-election than actually serving the American public.
We did nothing for her last fall but her strategy of being a milquetoast Republican must have worked as she handily won & is probably safe for life.
El Cid
I think we just need to deregulate and not force the planes to have all these government-mandated ‘controllers’ and let the free market determine which plane occupies which runway and flight path at which time.
Schlemizel
@El Cid:
I like the way you think! Do you by chance have a news letter I can subscribe to?
NotMax
@El Cid
Plus exempt them from lawsuits.
Suing for damages is just so frivolous, don’tcha know.
over_educated
If the Democrats pass this and the Obama signs it they absolutely deserve to lose the budget fight completely. You can’t stand on the proposition that the sequester harms services folks need (and it does) and at the same time chicken out when it effects you or affluent supporters. Holy crap are Democrats terrible negotiators and strategists sometimes.
Keith G
So, has the dye been cast? Will Congress propose more work-arounds for those issues that inconvenience the upper half while letting the bottom of our society suffer?
Will a good will wanting, deal seeking president allow this to happen?
RaflW
@Schlemizel: Yeah, she’s got her ticket punched and will be a longterm monument to missed opportunities and very weak sauce.
I don’t understand the love she gets in MN. Because she sits in a covertible in Minneapolis’ gay pride parade? Is that it? So brave!
El Cid
@NotMax: TORT REFORM!
Keith G
@Yutsano:
I have read more than one source that said the sequestration idea started with the Obama administration. Were they lying?
Keith G
@Hill Dweller: So? Often, leaders have to step up and take the hit for a longer term goal to be realized.
mdblanche
@Patrick: What about the Republican caucus? If the Democrats stand firm in the House, all it will take are a dozen or two crazies rebelling for this to fail, which they usually do unless they get to attach poison pill. Has anybody seen Boehner lately or has fallen into a bottle?
@Michele C: Would this be the House science committee Paul Broun sits on?
Patrick
@RaflW:
Beats me. She also voted to condemn moveon.org for their ad against Petraeus and against closing Gitmo. I wouldn’t vote for her.
Just Some Fuckhead
The part that eases the plight of poor people ever so slightly.
Yutsano
@Keith G: Oh stop it. You know damn well the sequester wouldn’t have been an issue if the Republicans hadn’t been complete assholes about the debt ceiling in the first place.
tmf (fka tesslibrarian)
@Comrade Dread: Of course, they’ll also outlaw any lawsuits (i.e. make purchasing a ticket also an agreement not to sue in case of injury or death). Because these privateers are providing a SERVICE, dirty plebes. Just be thankful you had the opportunity.
tmf (fka tesslibrarian)
oops. El Cid already got there.
Also not allowed to edit my previous comment. fywp.
Joel
@Keith G: Grandstanding, are we?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Keith G:
Republican debt ceiling terrorism, meet Memory Hole. Memory Hole, meet debt ceiling terrorism.
The fault dear Brutus lies not in ourselves, but in our stars, that we are hostage negotiators.
Jack the Second
The FAA should just start doing NPR-style pledge drives over the PAs of planes circling waiting to land.
“We only need $4000 to land this plane, with the help of passengers like you…”
Yutsano
And the House just passed it. Fuck.
jl
Thanks to commenters above for info on what they cut elsewhere to pay for maintaining big airport staffing.
The original GOP proposal was worse, if I understood it correctly: cut funds for improvements and capital maintenance. Which is typical for the very responsible, far-sighted serious daddy party who want to run the country like a responsible family. Slowly destroy assets so you can consume more now, and worry about the fallout later.
The press reporting I heard this morning on it was irritating. Lots of interviews with seemingly ignorant cyncial and childish air travelers. And one report complained about the dollar price tag of maintaining the staffing! What? It was ‘ironic’. Unless I totally misunderstand, that comment was idiotic, since they were moving dollars from one pot to another. The real cost was what capital maintenance, or improvements, or services were cut to get the funds. Maybe I was listening to on Onion News report and I didn’t realize it.
Keith G
@Yutsano: The problem is…is we do not live in a better world. Yes the GOP are assholes and their machinations are destructive. Complaining and name calling and wallowing in some perceived righteousness is not moving the ball. We have to find a way to deal with what this new reality is.
@Joel: Grandstanding? Ehh.
Call it that if it makes you feel better. I call it “worry’. There are fundamental issues not being worked on. Hell, not even being argued about in any meaningful way.
wvng
I’m at LaGuardia right now and the place is near chaos. So, not fixed yet.
Patricia Kayden
If President Obama had balls, he wouldn’t sign the bill. No Democrat should have supported it.
David Koch
@Patricia Kayden: before bashing Obummer, perhaps you could start with the liberal Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
it pass unanimously in the senate. veto proof.
that means everyone’s favorite liberal senators voted for it.
but no, blame obama, when even the liberal socialist bernie Sanders and when even the liberal populist grandstand “you didn’t build that” Elizabeth Warren wouldn’t back him up.
David Koch
@PsiFighter37:
your kidding right?
you don’t know why?
it’s simple. because big donors called up and screamed. the inherent reaction of every senator, yes, even that of the liberal “you didn’t build that” Elizabeth Warren, is to jump when someone who raised $600,000 for your campaign calls their office and complains. What’s Warren gonna say, “thanks for raising me all the cash, and I appreciate that your Lear jet is backed up, but go pound sand?”
Keith G
@David Koch: Your thinking is almost cancerous.
Yes, conditions now barely can be described as rational, but this is the hand that Obama (and all of us) have been dealt. Leaders in his position bare the responsibility to continually adapt and make progress toward the greater good.
David Koch
@Keith G: bwhahahahahhahahahaha
losers like you make me laugh.
whine like stuck pigs when someone exposes how their tiger-beat idols are phonies.
Sanders, Warren, and even the liberal Alan Grayson all sold you out and voted for this crap. all of them in rock sold safe seats, but instead standing up for the people, they catered on bended knee to their rich contributors. They’re not even cowards, they’re worst than cowards, they’re whores.
yet you can’t handle the truth. facing the truth that the cowards and whores you admire, idolize, and even send money to are frauds stabbing you in the back would shatter your shallow, fragile world. To cope, you find someone to scapegoat.
People like you are 1 1/2 steps away from the glen beck losers who blame obama for everything, including boston. to them, it’s not two murderers who bombed boston, no, it was obummer. to people like you, it’s not congressional dems (including liberal icons) selling out the base in favor of their jet-set bundles, no, it was obummer.
pathetic.
change starts from the bottom up, not the top down.
but as long as you keep giving your icons like Sanders, Wyden, and St. Feingold a pass for voting against obummer’s plan to close GITMO, then they’ll never stop selling you out.